Back in the Land of Normal People...a.k.a. "home"
This past weekend was the best one I've had in a long time. And I'm not kidding, either. David, Lynn, Steph and I all went to Acen, and it was awesome!
Saturday - After spending Friday night at Steph's house, we got up around 7:30, and for a while we sorta putzed around while we got our stuff together and got ready. We left after 8, and made our way to Rosemont. (Feels good to live within half an hour of a con. ^^) Traffic wasn't bad at all, and it wasn't too hard to find the Hyatt hotel and neighboring convention center - not only were they right there in plain sight (although on Sunday I did overhear one guy saying his mom had passed the hotel and center without realizing they were there), but we also saw some cosplayers walking down the street, including someone dressed as Yuna. We hit a snag when we had to park - the hotel parking was already filled, so we had to get a spot in the convention center parking garage. And while we were looking for a spot, we saw someone dressed as Vincent and another person as Naraku. David cheered upon seeing Naraku, and even tho the windows were all closed, the group heard us - boy, that was funny, lol.
By the time we found a spot, it was after 9:00 AM (Inuyasha panel starting time), but we couldn't check into the hotel yet, so we headed for the registration area to get our badges. Now THAT was an adventure in itself. One of the first people we saw while heading to the convention center lobby was this guy wearing a huge sign that said "Hug Me!" and was calling out "For the love of God, SOMEBODY HUG ME!" The night before, Steph had said to us, "I want a hug." Well, she didn't pass this chance up, she said "Okay!" and went up to the guy, who in turn was thrilled that he got a hug. When we reached the convention center lobby, we made our way through the multitude of visitors and cosplayers to get our badges. While we waited in line, we found two awesome cosplayers - one in a guy dressed as Link (in a blue tunic), and a guy dressed as Jigen from Lupin the 3rd. It was a good thing I'd brought my camera along, because I got shots of both - and was delighted because both were more than happy to pose for the pics. After getting our badges, we headed back to the Skyway to go to the hotel - the convention center was used for the Merchandise section of the con, while the hotel was where everything else was taking place. While in the Skyway, we met up with Vincent cosplayer we'd seen earlier, and she posed with Lynn and Steph for a picture. ^^ Not long after, we met with a second Link cosplayer (also in a blue tunic - we saw a couple other Links, but there weren't any red tunics. ;_;).
When we got to the hotel, we decided to just wander, and I got a number of other cosplay pictures. We even found a Marth cosplayer - Fred, I swear we looked all over for Roy; I even took a shot of Steph wearing a "Looking for Roy!" sign - but we couldn't find one anywhere. ;_; We checked out a card-game room, an RPG room, a video-game room, an arcade, and even a couple lower art galleries where we could check out artwork and even bid on some pieces in a silent auction. (I put up a bid for an awesome drawing of Sephiroth holding the Black Materia, but later that evening someone outbid me.) While in the card game room, we met a girl with a video camera who showed us a clip from Friday of Malik and Bakura cosplayers playing DDR. That was hilarious to watch. ^^ We went back upstairs, and checked out an Anime Music Video show (so many funny videos!), and a few rooms that were set aside as the Artist Alley - here there were a number of artists that were selling their work, some of them professional and others not. (We also found a hilarious be-right-back sign that I got a shot of.) During the course of the weekend we all got several prints and drawings from this area alone.
Around 1:30, we went to the Megatokyo panel - that was pretty entertaining, since poor Fred was having trouble getting the shideshow to work, and showed us two boxes that were serving as substitutes for Dom and Ken (Asmodeus). Dom's box got pretty beat up during the course of the panel, and Fred and Sarah also showed off a few things that were for "fan appreciation" (a.k.a. beating up fans bearing forbidden questions) - a bat, a large foam mallet, and an even bigger bat. After a while we left, and headed for the Merchandise area. Here we did a little shopping (in my case, cool cosplayer hunting, since I was the photographer), and got some lunch. I got a Grunty doll after that, and also made it a point to go to the Megatokyo stand - I didn't get autographs, since the line was HUGE, so I just kinda stood near the table and gandered at the MT merchandise, and in the process had a little chat with Fred and Sarah. They're so cool! ^^ I wish I'd been able to get autographs from them, but seeing as I wasn't the only one there and I knew the others wouldn't want to wait for an hour for me to get a two-line autograph, I settled with a 30-second chat. Not only that, I also found an awesome Dizzy cosplayer partnered with a guy dressed as Faust - Steph later told me that Dizzy might have been her friend Crizl, which would be awesome if she was.
That night, we went to Denny's for dinner (good place!), then did some more wandering. Stephanie even posed for a picture with a girl who was dressed as Sesshoumaru. This girl had the whole getup going: the markings on her hands and face, the white hair, the outift and armor, and even the fur pelt (a detail that every other Fluffy cosplayer had skipped over). We chatted with the girl for a couple of minutes, and told her she was the best Fluffy cosplayer we'd seen all day. (If not best Inuyasha character cosplayer period - we saw a ton of cosplayers from that show, but this girl took the cake.) Lynn even bowed to her, and the girl was shocked for a second, but played along and took a "that's right, you bow!" stance, lol.
No, we didn't get any pocky during the con - it sold out pretty quickly - but we did find a group of guys in giant pocky boxes (one box for every kind, including mint), and holding giant foam pocky sticks. (Yes, I did get a picture, lol.) David, Lynn and I went to one of the video rooms to watch Wolf's Rain, while Steph went off to wander and hug people. I wish now that I'd gone with her - they started it with the first episode, and even then the guy working the show couldn't figure out that we wanted it in Japanese with English subtitles. And to top it all off, the sound kept going in and out. (Which did allow for some "amateur voice acting," but got pretty irritating.) After that first episode, we decided to just cut our losses and head back to our room. On our way there, we also found a guy who was cosplaying quite elaborately as Sephiroth - I made it a point to get a shot of him. We watched some TV and just putzed around for a while, then we finally succumbed to exhaustion and went to sleep.
Sunday - This was when it was proven how effective alarms clocks are on me sometimes. I set our alarm clock for 9 AM so we'd have an early start (check-out time was at noon), but for some reason it decided to go off at 6 AM. Well, after being awakened by that thing, I couldn't sleep, so I took a shower and got dressed. (Apparently the alarm went off two more times after I left the room, and David finally shut it off.) Around 8:00 or so, Lynn woke up, and then a little after that David did. We turned on the TV (David also found a Daily Herald outside our room door), and watched Cliffhanger, and then finally got our stuff together to check out of the hotel. After we loaded our stuff in the car, we grabbed our wallets and other carry-along items to shop with, and headed back to the con to do some more wandering. I bought a print from the author of Paradigm Shift - we'd seen him the previous day, and he recognized me from my Cubs hat (I was one of maybe two or three people wearing a Cubs hat). ^^ After we bought a few last things, and took a few final pictures (I ended up with 49 total! And I wasn't in a single one, imagine that. -_-;;) we bid farewell to Acen, and headed out to the car. We got McDonald's for lunch, then headed for Steph's. However, since it was only after 1 PM, we weren't ready to call it a day, so we decided that we would go to my house - Steph dropped some of her stuff off at her house, and David did the same at his while getting his GameCube. Lynn drove me and Steph back to my place, and after David came by a while later, we started playing games. We hung out until about 11:30 PM, when everyone went home (Lynn left a bit earlier).
And that was our fun-filled Acen weekend. ^^ I'm most certainly going to make a scrapbook/album for this year, so we can look back it and poke fun at each other, lol. While at Denny's on Saturday, we also brainstormed on cosplay ideas for next year - we were going to cosplay this year, but due to lack of time to plan out and make costumes, we could only check out and admire other cosplayers. The themes we came up with were: Hellsing, NightWalker, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sailor Moon, Saiyuki, Cowboy Bebop, YuYu Hakusho, Hikaru no Go, Saint Seiya, Outlaw Star, Guilty Gear, Final Fantasy, Tekken, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Excel Saga, Soul Calibur, Zelda, Lunar, Lupin the 3rd, Kingdom Hearts, other Nintendo characters, Street Fighter, Marvel Vs. Capcom, Reign the Conqueror, .hack//SIGN, Escaflowne, and other various characters (including Domo-kun and Yazuu from Final Fantasy Advent Children). David even had an idea to go as the line of chocobos from the Final Fantasy Unlimited ending credits. Methinks it might end up being a Final Fantasy theme, since David's been wanting to go as a moogle and Lynn wants to go as Yuffie, but it's still up in the air. If anything, we'll prolly start work on costumes soon, since no matter what we choose, they certainly won't look like they've just been thrown together at the last minute. ^^
I'll put up links to those 49 pictures soon - however, if Steph, David, and Lynn so desire, I'll make it a friends-only post, so there won't be random people from all over looking at them. ^^ This is a stupid question, but could someone tell me how to actually write out links to stuff without just putting in the URL?
Monday was my sleep day. I think I woke up at 3 PM, after going to bed around midnight. @_@ I spent an hour waking up and scrounging up food for lunch, then Dad came home. After having a chat with him, we discovered that we have an ant colony in our kitchen. (Remember that ant we saw on the ceiling Sunday night? Yeah, it didn't come from outside after all. -_-) They seem to be coming from underneath the garbage can cabinet, and they march from under there and up between that and the dishwasher. These things aren't the tiny ones, either - they're the big kind. Dad and I had to rustle up an old can of Yard Raid to keep the ants down while we searched the basement and back of the house for a place where they might have gotten in. No success there, and so Dad went out to get a couple new cans of Raid while I vacuumed the house. Kinda figured out just how busy the spiders have been this past spring - I made it a point to get every web and spider I could find, especially around the treadmill. So yeah, by the time I was done, it was 7 PM, and Dad came back with House Raid in hand. We attacked the space the ants were coming from with it, and then we watched a bit of TV. Then I had dinner and wrote a few pages of my and kuja_rang's project - I'm almost done with my chapter, I promise! ^^
Today and tomorrow are gonna be fun. I have a dental appointment at 9 today, and tomorrow I'm finally getting my wisdoms pulled. @_@ I have no idea what kind of effect THAT will have on me, but we'll see how much of a wimp I am afterward, lol. Anyway, yes, since I gotta be up again in about 7 hours, I'll see y'all laters! ^^ *bounces off*
Saturday - After spending Friday night at Steph's house, we got up around 7:30, and for a while we sorta putzed around while we got our stuff together and got ready. We left after 8, and made our way to Rosemont. (Feels good to live within half an hour of a con. ^^) Traffic wasn't bad at all, and it wasn't too hard to find the Hyatt hotel and neighboring convention center - not only were they right there in plain sight (although on Sunday I did overhear one guy saying his mom had passed the hotel and center without realizing they were there), but we also saw some cosplayers walking down the street, including someone dressed as Yuna. We hit a snag when we had to park - the hotel parking was already filled, so we had to get a spot in the convention center parking garage. And while we were looking for a spot, we saw someone dressed as Vincent and another person as Naraku. David cheered upon seeing Naraku, and even tho the windows were all closed, the group heard us - boy, that was funny, lol.
By the time we found a spot, it was after 9:00 AM (Inuyasha panel starting time), but we couldn't check into the hotel yet, so we headed for the registration area to get our badges. Now THAT was an adventure in itself. One of the first people we saw while heading to the convention center lobby was this guy wearing a huge sign that said "Hug Me!" and was calling out "For the love of God, SOMEBODY HUG ME!" The night before, Steph had said to us, "I want a hug." Well, she didn't pass this chance up, she said "Okay!" and went up to the guy, who in turn was thrilled that he got a hug. When we reached the convention center lobby, we made our way through the multitude of visitors and cosplayers to get our badges. While we waited in line, we found two awesome cosplayers - one in a guy dressed as Link (in a blue tunic), and a guy dressed as Jigen from Lupin the 3rd. It was a good thing I'd brought my camera along, because I got shots of both - and was delighted because both were more than happy to pose for the pics. After getting our badges, we headed back to the Skyway to go to the hotel - the convention center was used for the Merchandise section of the con, while the hotel was where everything else was taking place. While in the Skyway, we met up with Vincent cosplayer we'd seen earlier, and she posed with Lynn and Steph for a picture. ^^ Not long after, we met with a second Link cosplayer (also in a blue tunic - we saw a couple other Links, but there weren't any red tunics. ;_;).
When we got to the hotel, we decided to just wander, and I got a number of other cosplay pictures. We even found a Marth cosplayer - Fred, I swear we looked all over for Roy; I even took a shot of Steph wearing a "Looking for Roy!" sign - but we couldn't find one anywhere. ;_; We checked out a card-game room, an RPG room, a video-game room, an arcade, and even a couple lower art galleries where we could check out artwork and even bid on some pieces in a silent auction. (I put up a bid for an awesome drawing of Sephiroth holding the Black Materia, but later that evening someone outbid me.) While in the card game room, we met a girl with a video camera who showed us a clip from Friday of Malik and Bakura cosplayers playing DDR. That was hilarious to watch. ^^ We went back upstairs, and checked out an Anime Music Video show (so many funny videos!), and a few rooms that were set aside as the Artist Alley - here there were a number of artists that were selling their work, some of them professional and others not. (We also found a hilarious be-right-back sign that I got a shot of.) During the course of the weekend we all got several prints and drawings from this area alone.
Around 1:30, we went to the Megatokyo panel - that was pretty entertaining, since poor Fred was having trouble getting the shideshow to work, and showed us two boxes that were serving as substitutes for Dom and Ken (Asmodeus). Dom's box got pretty beat up during the course of the panel, and Fred and Sarah also showed off a few things that were for "fan appreciation" (a.k.a. beating up fans bearing forbidden questions) - a bat, a large foam mallet, and an even bigger bat. After a while we left, and headed for the Merchandise area. Here we did a little shopping (in my case, cool cosplayer hunting, since I was the photographer), and got some lunch. I got a Grunty doll after that, and also made it a point to go to the Megatokyo stand - I didn't get autographs, since the line was HUGE, so I just kinda stood near the table and gandered at the MT merchandise, and in the process had a little chat with Fred and Sarah. They're so cool! ^^ I wish I'd been able to get autographs from them, but seeing as I wasn't the only one there and I knew the others wouldn't want to wait for an hour for me to get a two-line autograph, I settled with a 30-second chat. Not only that, I also found an awesome Dizzy cosplayer partnered with a guy dressed as Faust - Steph later told me that Dizzy might have been her friend Crizl, which would be awesome if she was.
That night, we went to Denny's for dinner (good place!), then did some more wandering. Stephanie even posed for a picture with a girl who was dressed as Sesshoumaru. This girl had the whole getup going: the markings on her hands and face, the white hair, the outift and armor, and even the fur pelt (a detail that every other Fluffy cosplayer had skipped over). We chatted with the girl for a couple of minutes, and told her she was the best Fluffy cosplayer we'd seen all day. (If not best Inuyasha character cosplayer period - we saw a ton of cosplayers from that show, but this girl took the cake.) Lynn even bowed to her, and the girl was shocked for a second, but played along and took a "that's right, you bow!" stance, lol.
No, we didn't get any pocky during the con - it sold out pretty quickly - but we did find a group of guys in giant pocky boxes (one box for every kind, including mint), and holding giant foam pocky sticks. (Yes, I did get a picture, lol.) David, Lynn and I went to one of the video rooms to watch Wolf's Rain, while Steph went off to wander and hug people. I wish now that I'd gone with her - they started it with the first episode, and even then the guy working the show couldn't figure out that we wanted it in Japanese with English subtitles. And to top it all off, the sound kept going in and out. (Which did allow for some "amateur voice acting," but got pretty irritating.) After that first episode, we decided to just cut our losses and head back to our room. On our way there, we also found a guy who was cosplaying quite elaborately as Sephiroth - I made it a point to get a shot of him. We watched some TV and just putzed around for a while, then we finally succumbed to exhaustion and went to sleep.
Sunday - This was when it was proven how effective alarms clocks are on me sometimes. I set our alarm clock for 9 AM so we'd have an early start (check-out time was at noon), but for some reason it decided to go off at 6 AM. Well, after being awakened by that thing, I couldn't sleep, so I took a shower and got dressed. (Apparently the alarm went off two more times after I left the room, and David finally shut it off.) Around 8:00 or so, Lynn woke up, and then a little after that David did. We turned on the TV (David also found a Daily Herald outside our room door), and watched Cliffhanger, and then finally got our stuff together to check out of the hotel. After we loaded our stuff in the car, we grabbed our wallets and other carry-along items to shop with, and headed back to the con to do some more wandering. I bought a print from the author of Paradigm Shift - we'd seen him the previous day, and he recognized me from my Cubs hat (I was one of maybe two or three people wearing a Cubs hat). ^^ After we bought a few last things, and took a few final pictures (I ended up with 49 total! And I wasn't in a single one, imagine that. -_-;;) we bid farewell to Acen, and headed out to the car. We got McDonald's for lunch, then headed for Steph's. However, since it was only after 1 PM, we weren't ready to call it a day, so we decided that we would go to my house - Steph dropped some of her stuff off at her house, and David did the same at his while getting his GameCube. Lynn drove me and Steph back to my place, and after David came by a while later, we started playing games. We hung out until about 11:30 PM, when everyone went home (Lynn left a bit earlier).
And that was our fun-filled Acen weekend. ^^ I'm most certainly going to make a scrapbook/album for this year, so we can look back it and poke fun at each other, lol. While at Denny's on Saturday, we also brainstormed on cosplay ideas for next year - we were going to cosplay this year, but due to lack of time to plan out and make costumes, we could only check out and admire other cosplayers. The themes we came up with were: Hellsing, NightWalker, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Sailor Moon, Saiyuki, Cowboy Bebop, YuYu Hakusho, Hikaru no Go, Saint Seiya, Outlaw Star, Guilty Gear, Final Fantasy, Tekken, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Excel Saga, Soul Calibur, Zelda, Lunar, Lupin the 3rd, Kingdom Hearts, other Nintendo characters, Street Fighter, Marvel Vs. Capcom, Reign the Conqueror, .hack//SIGN, Escaflowne, and other various characters (including Domo-kun and Yazuu from Final Fantasy Advent Children). David even had an idea to go as the line of chocobos from the Final Fantasy Unlimited ending credits. Methinks it might end up being a Final Fantasy theme, since David's been wanting to go as a moogle and Lynn wants to go as Yuffie, but it's still up in the air. If anything, we'll prolly start work on costumes soon, since no matter what we choose, they certainly won't look like they've just been thrown together at the last minute. ^^
I'll put up links to those 49 pictures soon - however, if Steph, David, and Lynn so desire, I'll make it a friends-only post, so there won't be random people from all over looking at them. ^^ This is a stupid question, but could someone tell me how to actually write out links to stuff without just putting in the URL?
Monday was my sleep day. I think I woke up at 3 PM, after going to bed around midnight. @_@ I spent an hour waking up and scrounging up food for lunch, then Dad came home. After having a chat with him, we discovered that we have an ant colony in our kitchen. (Remember that ant we saw on the ceiling Sunday night? Yeah, it didn't come from outside after all. -_-) They seem to be coming from underneath the garbage can cabinet, and they march from under there and up between that and the dishwasher. These things aren't the tiny ones, either - they're the big kind. Dad and I had to rustle up an old can of Yard Raid to keep the ants down while we searched the basement and back of the house for a place where they might have gotten in. No success there, and so Dad went out to get a couple new cans of Raid while I vacuumed the house. Kinda figured out just how busy the spiders have been this past spring - I made it a point to get every web and spider I could find, especially around the treadmill. So yeah, by the time I was done, it was 7 PM, and Dad came back with House Raid in hand. We attacked the space the ants were coming from with it, and then we watched a bit of TV. Then I had dinner and wrote a few pages of my and kuja_rang's project - I'm almost done with my chapter, I promise! ^^
Today and tomorrow are gonna be fun. I have a dental appointment at 9 today, and tomorrow I'm finally getting my wisdoms pulled. @_@ I have no idea what kind of effect THAT will have on me, but we'll see how much of a wimp I am afterward, lol. Anyway, yes, since I gotta be up again in about 7 hours, I'll see y'all laters! ^^ *bounces off*